SOL 2016, D7 Digging Deeper

My Monday through Friday goal for writing is to focus on my students, my classroom, my school – my work life. I am hoping that the everyday habit of reflection will let me see what I do from a different vantage point.

Today’s golden nugget is to never make assumptions until you know the whole story, especially when you are dealing with 10 year olds! We were talking about our upcoming all grade trip to the mountains for science ed. for 3 days in April. One particularly confident student raised her hand and announced that she wasn’t going because she heard from her other brother that it was awful and everyone got food poisoning. WHAT??!?! My heart dropped as I knew those couple of kids who were already on the fence about a 2 night sleepover just fell off firmly into their own backyards.

I glossed over it as best I could, reassuring everyone that in fact no one had ever gotten sick on the trip but it wasn’t until the student and I talked alone later in the day that the real story came out. I had some suspicions but after some talk of Mr. Peabody’s Apples and how hard it would now be to pull back all the feathers into the pillow, the tears started to flow. My super confident, informed, voracious reader, self assured, Hilary Clinton supporter to the end student has never slept at someone else’s house and she’s scared. Rightly so.

If we just take a minute to dig deeper, it often all makes sense. I wonder just how often I assume? And just how often would I be more attuned to my kids if I had the time to dig deeper every day. I am going to dig deeper tomorrow. Slow down, and dig.

Your description of this moment is great. And based on the fact that you did dig deeper today, I’d be willing to bet that more often than not you work to truly understand the what and why of your students’ actions.